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 Your Cover Letter The cover letter is a simple little thing that carries a lot of weight. It is such a simple thing that lots of people don't include one when they mail packages (e.g. headshot, resume, video reel, etc.) to prospective casting professionals. This is a mistake for a number of reasons. The biggest reason being that it is the correct way to put a package together. Not sending a cover letter is like buying a piece of furniture that needs to be assembled, and it arrives at your house with no instructions. You may say, that it is obvious why you are sending your package, but you never know who will receive that package. If it is an intern, will he/she know why you sent your package? If they don't, you might end up filed under "O" which is what the top of a trash can looks like. The intern may not be sure what to do with your package and may not want to keep asking the agent, "What should I do with this one?" For these reasons, your package may end up in the trash. People in the entertainment industry are extremely busy and like anything that can make their work easier. If you make it hard for them to do their job, your package could end up in the trash. For example, one agent said that glossy pictures are too hard to see. He said that, "You have to hold them just the right way so that you don't create a glare from the lights." The agent said that whenever he gets a glossy headshot, he puts it in the trash without even looking at the resume. Another agent said that "If I don't get a cover letter with the package, I put the package in the trash. It is too time consuming for me to figure out why the person sent the package." While these stories sound cold hearted, it is truly a fact of life . time is money! You want to stand out and having a professional package, complete with a cover letter is one way to do this. With this in mind, let's talk about the simple, but all-important cover letter. The cover letter should do a number of things:
This
information can be presented in just a few sentences which keeps the
cover letter short and to the point. Remember, more than any other business,
time is money in the entertainment industry! Time is also what none
of us have very much of in the run of a day. The agent needs to be able
to discern what it is that you want, what you look like and what your
accomplishments are to date.
If the agent is interested in you after taking a look at these things, she/he needs to be able to contact you without looking for your phone number or address. This is crucial to getting listed with an agent and there are some tricks to getting listed with agents that aren't in your area. Those tricks include asking a friend or relative in the agent's area, if you can use their address and get a pager with an 800 number. The key is to be available if the agent calls. If you are never available, the agent will eventually stop calling. Include your address and contact numbers in clear view. You may want to bold them so that they stand out. Anything that you can do to save the agent time will be to your benefit. Even though your contact information should be in the cover letter, it should also be on the resume. If the cover letter gets lost or thrown away, your phone number should be a headshot away.
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